DeCA director and CEO Bill Moore announces plans to retire after more than 40 years of service

FORT LEE, Va. – When Bill Moore signed on as director and CEO of the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) in 2020, he was given marching orders from the Pentagon to transform the military’s grocery benefit.

As Moore prepares to retire March 31 after more than 40 years of government service, he reflected on his efforts to lead the commissaries’ gigantic leap into the future.

“I was given a mandate by the Department of Defense to bring DeCA into the 21st century. The agency needed to be transformed,” he said. “The example the Department used was online shopping.”

DeCA launched its Commissary CLICK2GO online ordering/curbside pickup program in 2019. When Moore came aboard in August 2020, five stores had the service. By October 2021, Commissary CLICK2GO was available across the DeCA universe.

“In six months, we replaced our home-grown online shopping system, and through our IT provider deployed a commercial system across all stores,” Moore said. “Later, we added online payment to the mix, and now we’re working toward delivery. 

“Our journey to online shopping is just one example of why we needed to transform,” he added. “As an agency, we plotted a destination, our vision ‘To be THE grocery provider of choice for our eligible patrons – delivering a vital benefit exclusively for our military community and their families.’ We then built a ‘game plan’ to achieve the vision and went for it.” 

Pushing the pace of the commissaries’ online shopping capabilities was just part of the job, Moore said. His overall task list, via numerous “lines of effort,” also included growing the patron base, improving patron savings, fostering the agency’s ongoing partnership with the military exchanges and convincing DOD that the commissary benefit was still a vital benefit and key food security resource for the Department’s service members and their families. He achieved all of those objectives and more in his two and a half years at the agency.

Moore credited the agency’s ability to strategically plan and make impact adjustments along the way as the mechanism to help DeCA achieve the following significant accomplishments during his tenure:

• Sales. DeCA turned the tide on a 10-year, 5-percent per year decline in sales, increasing performance by 3.2 percent in fiscal year 2022 and so far in 2023 experiencing a 12-percent increase.

• Savings. Moore said patron savings improved thanks to a better working relationship with suppliers, refined pricing particularly on food staples and the Department’s decision to invest in the benefit by eliminating the margin offset.

• Supply chain. The COVID-19 pandemic threw the grocery supply chain into disarray, causing DeCA to deal with severe product movement challenges that are still ongoing. Navigating through this supply chain remains the agency’s top priority. “We are still struggling with getting the product to the loading dock, but we’re trending up,” Moore said. “Our product fill rates have improved by 15-20 percent now.” 

• Vendor stocking. DeCA achieved a 40-percent improvement in not-in-stocks by improving the process of getting product from the backroom to the shelf. The agency eliminated vendor stockers so that either commissary associates stocked the shelves or the store directly leveraged contractors to do it, giving store leadership ownership of the last critical step of the supply chain.

• Customer service. DeCA’s customer service numbers are about 10 percent higher than 2020 levels, with a score of 89 on a scale of 100. Moore credits that improvement with changing the DeCA culture to a “patron focus” with a disciplined training approach.

• Crisis insurance policy. During the pandemic, DeCA’s 10,000-plus store employees continued stocking shelves, checking out customers and making sure patrons had food security. During the infant formula situation, the nation lost a major manufacturer of infant formula leading to severe shortages everywhere. Commissaries worked with their remaining suppliers and had infant formula on the shelf when its patrons needed it.

Moore’s journey to DeCA began in 1983 when he entered government service. Over the next four decades he served in numerous engineering, logistics and leadership positions in the Headquarters, Department of the Army, the U.S. Army Training & Doctrine Command, and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command. He was appointed to the Senior Executive Service (SES) in October 2006.

His key assignments included the following:

• From 2016 to 2020, (tier 3 SES) Army Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, G4, responsible for Army logistics plans, policy and programming, managing the Army’s logistics portfolio.

• From 2015 to 2016, (SES tier 2) Deputy Chief of Staff G-1/4 (Personnel, Logistics and Engineering), U.S. Army Training & Doctrine Command.

• From 2006 to 2015, (SES tier 2) Deputy to the Commanding General of the Army’s Combined Arms Support Command and Fort Lee, Virginia, leading Army sustainment training, leader development and modernization.

With the end of his DeCA days in sight, Moore cannot help but see the irony of his commissary experience. As the son of a Vietnam War combat veteran, he grew up in a family that depended on commissaries, and now he ends his federal career being director and CEO of the agency responsible for delivering that benefit.

“I remember when my dad was a staff sergeant, and back then every dollar counted,” Moore said. “My mother dragged me to the commissary every week. I hated it, but she said we needed to shop there to save money.

“Today, the savings our patrons get by shopping the commissary are just as significant to economic security,” he added. “As I always tell anyone who will listen, if a patron shops the commissary and spends $200 in groceries, they’ll save $50. That’s what our patrons care about, and that’s why we exist. It’s been a true honor to finish my career leading DeCA in what this agency does every day to help military families better serve our nation.”

-DeCA-

About DeCA: The Defense Commissary Agency operates a worldwide chain of commissaries providing groceries to military personnel, retirees and their families in a safe and secure shopping environment. Commissaries provide a military benefit, saving authorized patrons thousands of dollars annually on their purchases compared to similar products at commercial retailers. The discounted prices include a 5-percent surcharge, which covers the costs of building new commissaries and modernizing existing ones. A core military family support element, and a valued part of military pay and benefits, commissaries contribute to family readiness, enhance the quality of life for America’s military and their families, and help recruit and retain the best and brightest men and women to serve their country.